The University of Zurich has kept its 90th position in the 2020 Times Higher Education World University ranking, for which just under 1,400 universities were evaluated. The ranking is based on a survey of highly respected academics who, on invitation by THE, are asked to identify the world’s best universities. ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne are first and second among universities in Switzerland, while the University of Zurich ranks third ahead of the universities of Basel, Bern and Geneva.

Slight drop for some indicators

The performance indicators of the annual THE ranking are grouped into five areas: Teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students and research) and industry income (knowledge transfer).

UZH held its excellent level for the teaching and research indicators. However, there was a slight drop in the area of citations;  in other words, compared with the previous year the University of Zurich’s publications were cited less often than those of other universities. The industry income indicator also received a slightly lower score. In the internationalization category, however, UZH maintained its high level.

UZH positions in the THE ranking categories 2016 to 2020.

Adjustment in data entry

Last year’s THE ranking was the first for which UZH submitted its full-time equivalents broken down into individual subjects, which were thus presented correctly for the first time.  This adjustment resulted in UZH moving up 46 positions.

Full-time equivalents were also submitted for students rather than stating the number of students, as was done previously. This also led to an improvement in almost all of the categories that take into account student numbers.

THE-Ranking 2019